Call it strange. Call it something
to blame. Call it a heat to hover one’s hands,
and name it as a place where light
comes from, while it had been born
from an era of darkness.
Possessor. A hand wrapped as burning rope
around a brittle, kiss-starved neck.
One more whispered longing sent upwards
to branches in a thinning evening.
For me to write my harrowed name
into the ruined walls of a shelter,
while burying my crown at bruised feet.
I taste all that has fevered itself,
under heaviest eyelids. I hand to myself
roses that extend of their stems,
while piercing this flesh
with poisoned thorns.
I hear a voice in a mirror,
while its reflected figure stares back
with eyes black as spattered ink,
while its arms tremble as winter boughs,
sickened, without warmth,
deserted without care.
Call this anger a face with its venom
to sting those at a distance.
Call this heat a fire without control,
while I am contained to a mirage,
a falsehood of no worship,
no visitor to his despair,
peeling somber eyelids back
to hear always a rush of air
exiting like from dark caves.
Modern Romanticism 